finding my true self in little, hidden prayers of silence...

The Anglican mystic, Evelyn Underhill, certainly had a way with words. One Christmas observation cuts to the chase: 

Human nature is like a stable inhabited by the ox of passion and the ass of prejudice; animals which take up a lot of room and which I suppose most of us are feeding on the quiet. And it is there between them, pushing them out, that Christ must be born and in their very manger he must be laid – and they will be the first to fall on their knees before him. Sometimes Christians seem far nearer to those animals than to Christ in his simple poverty, self-abandoned to God.

 

Who could question her blunt clarity this year as so-called people of faith bray-on about a non-existent "war on Christmas," spend enormous amounts of money and time on holiday gifts meant to honor the babe in the manger while living children are abused, ridiculed and left to die of dehydration along our southern border with Mexico?  Sometimes, indeed, we Christians seem far nearer to those animals than to Christ in his simple poverty and self-abandonment to God. Perhaps it is always true in our world that there is an abundance of cruel darkness and only a tiny light.

Henri Nouwen confessed that he, too, like me, "keeps expecting loud and impressive events" to arrive in bold ways to redress injustice and usher in the realm of comfort and joy. Yet over and again, "our salvation comes from something small, tender, and vulnerable, something hardly noticeable. God, who is the Creator of the Universe, comes to us in smallness, weakness, and hiddenness." As the prophet Isaiah wrote: A shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom. The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him. (Isaiah 11: 1-2)

Advent encourages me to  reclaim, however haltingly, the practice of inner silence. As Fr. Richard Rohr writes in his daily reflections: cultivating contemplation keeps our unrealistic expectations in check. It nourishes balance rather than feeding despair. And invites us to see the blessings in the small and often hidden presence of the holy.

I’m convinced that once you learn how to look out at life from the contemplative eyes of the True Self, your politics and economics are going to change on their own. I don’t need to teach you what your politics should or shouldn’t be. Once you see things contemplatively, you’ll begin to seek the bias from the bottom instead of the top, you’ll be free to embrace your shadow, and you can live at peace with those who are different. From a contemplative stance, you’ll know what action is yours to do—and what is not yours to do—almost naturally.

Rohr quotes the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, concerning the importance for those who engage in social justice to also bathe their hearts in silent contemplation. As one of my mentors used to say: Contemplation is NOT navel gazing, but rather taking a long, loving look at what is real.

[Contemplation] is very far from being just one kind of thing that Christians do: it is the key to prayer, liturgy, art and ethics, the key to the essence of a renewed humanity that is capable of seeing the world and other subjects in the world with freedom—freedom from self-oriented, acquisitive habits and the distorted understanding that come from them. To put it boldly, contemplation is the only ultimate answer to the unreal and insane world that our financial systems and our advertising culture and our chaotic and unexamined emotions encourage us to inhabit. To learn contemplative prayer is to learn what we need so as to live truthfully and honestly and lovingly. It is a deeply revolutionary matter. (http://email.cac.org/t/ViewEmail/d/2DDB91A
4DE6041972540EF23F30FEDED/1FA396565E084E10A10BC276F201ED4B)

With candles and Advent music my practice has been simple: I sit in the dark stillness, breathing in, breathing out. "Come, Lord Jesus" breathing in; "Have mercy on me" breathing out. Nothing fancy, nothing complicated. More often than not, my monkey-mind leads me into places I didn't know existed. I wish after all these years I was better at this. But as the masters of Centering Prayer suggest, when I realize I have wandered, its time to return to my breathing prayers. No scolding or shame allowed, just a gentle return to God's quiet blessing. This tenderness links me to the prayers of Jesus. Nouwen wrote:  

The small child of Bethlehem, the unknown young man of Nazareth, the rejected preacher, the naked man on the cross, he (is the one who) asks for my full attention. The work of our salvation takes place in the midst of a world that continues to shout, scream, and overwhelm us with its claims and promises. But the promise is hidden in the shoot that sprouts from the stump, a shoot that hardly anyone notices.

credits:

+ Susan Schleck @ http://www.ecva.org/exhibition/icons/pages/schleck.html

+ Allendale UMC

+ Me